


gusts and foul flaws

by belovedmuerto



Series: An Experiment in Apathy [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Kissing, M/M, brain!sex, empath!John, experiment in apathy, experiment in empathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 22:17:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock doesn't know what's happening, and he doesn't like it one bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gusts and foul flaws

**Author's Note:**

> Guh, _finally_ , this feels like it took forever. Apologies for the delay, things have been rather busy the past few weeks.
> 
> Thanks to Castiron and thisprettywren for doing beta duty on this one, and to PrettyArbitrary for reading the original version and pointing out that I was writing two stories at once.
> 
> (That said, the next one is already started! Fancy that!)

Sherlock can feel him pulling away, gently, inexorably. Like the tides, receding while the sand beneath his toes flows away, leaving him off balance and unsure. And all the while, John is drifting further out of reach, slipping through his fingers. There is something there that Sherlock doesn’t quite comprehend, on the edges of his consciousness. He sees it in his peripheral vision, out of the corner of his eye. It’s driving him mad.

It’s been happening for weeks, so slow, so quiet that Sherlock hadn’t noticed it at first. It worries him, that he hadn’t noticed for so long. And then there are the dreams.

They’re awful.

There’s something going on with John, and he isn’t telling Sherlock what it is. It’s odd and off-putting, because John is the strong one. He’s the one who can handle all this empath stuff, who keeps Sherlock sane, who shows him how he’s supposed to approach all of this, deal with it. Sherlock has very little idea of how to do such things on his own; this is why he spent so long working on not feeling anything at all.

\----

Molly gives him A Look, after John leaves the morgue. It is, by far, the most aggressive thing she’s ever done around him; Sherlock can still feel her cloyingly sweet concern for John and her prickly annoyance with him. Sherlock really isn’t sure why, John’s only going for coffee, so he ignores her; admittedly, he ignores Molly more often than not. Is there something he isn’t picking up on? Surely not; Sherlock Holmes does not miss things... mostly.

Most likely Molly is imagining things; she does that. Frequently, in Sherlock’s experience. John is still just slightly off, true, after that awful dream he’d had the other night, but that isn’t abnormal for John, not entirely, and Sherlock will allow for the conjecture that perhaps she is picking up on that. Intuition, or something like.

John is an empath, after all. The dream had adversely affected him--hell, it had adversely affected Sherlock as well--it’s entirely understandable, even for Sherlock and his cultivated lack of natural empathy, that it is taking time for John to process that. Although it seems to be taking longer than usual. _This might become cause for concern_ , Sherlock thinks, _but certainly not yet?_

And Sherlock is clearly giving him enough time and as much space as he can manage with which to do that. That’s what he’s supposed to do, right? Be supportive, which he is. Be a good friend, which he’s trying very hard to be. Be an attentive... whatever he is, which, again, he has been. For days now. What else is he to do?

Molly runs off after John, wringing her hands together, after she’s given Sherlock another pointed look.

Fine. Whatever, let her be meddling and worried at John. Sherlock has work to do, and he doesn’t have time to placate or coddle her. Or John, for that matter. Not that John can’t take care of himself. John has always been impressively good at taking care of himself; Sherlock has noticed, of course he has. He hasn’t failed to notice the way John manages to take care of him as well, unobtrusively, for the most part. Except when he’s being spectacularly annoying about it, that is.

Molly returns a few minutes later, blushing. He can feel her staring at him, working up the nerve to say something. Her emotional flutterings tease at the edges of his awareness, dulled by the absence of John as a conduit, refracted more than usual by the distance between them. It’s a blessing and a distraction.

“Just say it, Molly; your hovering is incredibly distracting.”

“You should apologize,” she says, voice more of a squeak, words jumbled together in her nervousness.

“What for?” He doesn’t bother looking up at her.

“I don’t know, whatever it is you two fought about. It might not be your fault, Sherlock, but John is clearly hurting, and you should do something about that.”

Sherlock glances at her across the corpse--possible serial murderer, he isn’t certain yet but he has several suspicions, and she is incredibly annoying, hovering so close--and raises one eyebrow.

She flushes an unattractive, dull red, but stands her ground.

“Not that it’s your business, Molly, but we haven’t fought about anything recently. So there is nothing for me to apologize for.”

“You should talk to him, Sherlock. There’s something going on.”

Sherlock glares at her. “You think I haven’t tried?”

She’s the one to break the gaze, flinching under his glare and looking down at her shoes. Because everything he had said is right. He has tried. He’s been trying, he is _still_ trying, even now, and John has insisted over and over that he’s fine. And Sherlock doesn’t know how to get it out of it him if John doesn’t want to talk. He’s not good at this, and he never has been, not good at emotions, and definitely not good at talking about them. So it’s fine. It’ll stay fine until it really is fine, and until such time, Sherlock will deal with it, as best he can. Which is mostly to ignore it. Just like John is doing.

It strikes him then, that John is much too far away to be merely getting coffee. He can no longer feel the way that Molly is feeling at all--ominous in that it means John is too far away to be able to pick up on her emotions, but a blessing for Sherlock.

“What did you do?” he asks harshly.

“What?”

“John’s left. What did you do?”

“I gave him a hug.” She crosses her arms, defensive, defiant.

Sherlock returns his gaze to the body before him. So much less complicated, corpses. So much quieter.

“Black, two sugars.”

“What?”

“You’re going to get coffee now John’s left, aren’t you?”

\----

John isn’t home when he gets there, and that is yet another distraction. Far too many of them, today, keeping him from working efficiently. John is nearby, however, and that’s enough to reassure Sherlock that he’s fine. So he quickly tunes that out in favor of experimentation and theorizing about the case.

The Work must come first. John knows that, he accepts it.

John does eventually return, hours later, carrying a takeaway and beer and looking weary. Sherlock is in the middle of case-related experimentation and glances up only briefly at John as he sags into the sofa and turns on the telly.

“You’re all right, aren’t you?” Sherlock asks some time later, not looking up from his microscope. It’s the only concession he is willing to make, right now.

“Yes, I’m fine. Of course I am,” John replies, around a mouthful of what sounds to Sherlock like noodles.

Sherlock glances over at him, at John looking at him with wide eyes. He can’t tell if they’re wide in surprise or confusion, and John’s emotions are too muddled by the beer he’s drunk to make much sense to Sherlock.

“You’d tell me if you weren’t?”

“O’course I would.” John shrugs and turns his attention back to the glob of noodles dripping off of his chopsticks.

It rings hollow in Sherlock’s ears, but true somehow, and he watches John for a few moments longer while he tries to parse that. He comes to no satisfactory conclusion.

But there is Work, and it is important, it is vital. The Work is always most important, and Sherlock’s attention returns shortly to it.

The rest will have to wait.

At some point that night, John gets up and goes to bed. He doesn’t dream, at least not any dream that affects Sherlock, who works through the night.

\----

John comes into their room through the bathroom, Sherlock hears him. He’s... yes, rubbing his hair dry with a towel. Feet are bare, dressing gown wrapped tight around him. He stops and looks at Sherlock for a moment before leaving again.

 Sherlock returns to his thoughts. He’s stretched out in his bed. It’s been three days since the case started, by his own calculations. He’s only eaten a couple pieces of toast and some cheese that John forced on him, along with the endless cups of tea, since returning from the morgue the other day.

He hasn’t slept at all, and his mind has found the laser focus that he used to only be able to achieve with copious quantities of cocaine. It is blissful, nearly as blissful as the aftermath of what John does to him.

John returns from his trip upstairs a few minutes later, dressed for sleeping, and his presence is enough to ratchet Sherlock’s focus up even higher, even sharper, hotter, brighter. He feels John stretch out in bed next to him.

“I’d ask why you’re thinking in here, but then I saw the sitting room,” John says, quietly.

Sherlock smiles, but doesn’t answer.

“Are you going to sleep tonight?”

“Doubtful.” Sherlock should mind the interruption, but finds he doesn’t. He can answer John’s questions, make use of the peace and focus that being near John brings him, and still think.

It’s better than being high, really.

“You don’t mind if I do, do you?”

Sherlock makes a sound indicating he doesn’t mind.

“I won’t disturb you?”

“No, John. Go to sleep, your exhaustion is annoying.”

“Good night to you, too, you daft git.” But his voice, and his head, are filled with such affection when he says it, that Sherlock only smiles.

John succumbs to sleep quickly, without much shuffling of position or noise. It shouldn’t be fascinating, but it is. He turns only once, towards Sherlock, draping an arm across his torso. Sherlock finds he doesn’t mind this either, nor does he mind the snuffling into his neck that John does as he shifts closer in his sleep.

Sherlock has no intention of sleeping that night, but apparently his body has other notions, and overpowers him without his even noticing. Traitorous body.

He’s in the dark, and it is cold, and it is black. He is blind.

No, not blind. He simply cannot see what is going on. He cannot hear it, either, but he can feel it.

John is dreaming.

Sherlock tries to shout, to talk to him, to give him some sense that this is only a dream, but he doesn’t feel as though he’s getting through. John is stuck in the nightmare and Sherlock cannot break it from his own dream space, from within his own mind. Nor does he seem to be able to wake himself up, which is frustrating beyond belief. Not only has his body betrayed him by falling asleep, but his mind is betraying him in its powerlessness as well.

It feels as though he’s being filled up, with hatred and fear and revulsion.

He tries to fight against it, to keep it separate, remain above it, but it washes over him, through him, and he feels as though he’s drowning.

Sherlock tries to scream. He tries to wake himself, but he is stuck, just as stuck as John, just as much prey to the nightmare, made all the worse because he cannot _see_. There’s nothing for him to observe, no way for him to deduce what’s going on or how to fight it, and all he can do is fight against the tide of John’s emotions.

He is stuck in the loop of it, drowning next to John in the bed they are sharing.

Sherlock does eventually wake up, a great weight on his chest, nearly unable to breathe. His face is wet with tears and his chest lurches, trying to heave, trying to breathe around the weight on it and the weight in it.

“John!” he manages, a croak. His lungs are emptying fast, his wrists are pinned to the bed at shoulder height in vise-like grips. He cannot move, he can barely breathe, and the emotions of the nightmare, lust and horror, fear and revulsion, are making his stomach roil in protest.

“John!” he tries again. His voice is going, along with his breath.

“John!” He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe--

His panic must break through, because the bruisingly strong grip eases and then disappears, and John rolls off him with a choked sound.

Sherlock struggles to breathe, to catch his breath, to find and keep it, not to let it run away from him into hyperventilation, and he hears John breathing next to him, apparently doing the same. After a few moments, John turns back to him, wrapping around him, gently, gently, burying his face against Sherlock’s neck, breath harsh against his skin, harsh and panicked and slowly easing towards something closer to normal.

It’s several long minutes of shared breathing before Sherlock realizes that John is murmuring words against his neck, “I’m so sorry, Sherlock, so sorry,” over and over again.

Sherlock makes his arms move, go around John, pull him closer. He doesn’t say anything, there’s nothing to say, no forgiveness on his part to give. _Stuck with me,_ he thinks, and he knows that the reminder to himself, to John, has got through John’s pain and guilt because John pulls away to look down at him in the dim light filtering through into the room, eyes wide and wet with unshed tears.

John just stares at him for several long moments, and Sherlock lets him, doesn’t speak, doesn’t look away, meets his gaze and lays himself bare before John: everything he’s felt for the past couple of weeks but hasn’t brought up, all of his worries about John and his hurt at the way John has been pulling away from him and his incomprehension of _why_ , all of it, everything, he lets it all filter through his mind. John sees it all, and a look of profound sadness crosses his face, for an instant.

Sherlock doesn’t have time to analyze that expression though, because John is curling against him again, wrapping himself more tightly around Sherlock, and pushing. Pushing hard and fast, a wave of emotion that tears a moan from Sherlock’s throat before he can stop it, arches his back and makes him see stars with its potency.

“Christ,” Sherlock murmurs, when he’s finished gasping. “John?”

John looks at him with a wicked grin on his face, his mood changing, a gentle hum of ‘you up for it?’ buzzing through him.

And Sherlock has found, recently, that’s he’s pretty much always up for it.

The case is forgotten, momentarily.

His laser focus, shattered by the nightmare, does not hasten to return.

Together, they seek to forget everything beyond the confines of the bed, everything but murmured words of endearment and encouragement, everything but clutching fingers and wrapped legs and soft gasps and heady moans.

John falls asleep again, later, a soft smile on his face, his nightmare forgotten. Sherlock heaves himself into a sitting position, back against the headboard, and shakes off the lethargy and the bliss, returning his thoughts to the case, with one hand wrapped securely around John’s wrist.

\----

The case ends up being wonderful. Sherlock is able to forget about his worries for almost the whole next week, delete them whole, while he’s wrapped up in it. But they come screaming back as soon as it’s over.

When the case is solved--for a few days Sherlock is afraid it won’t be, and he’s utterly delighted at his own genius when he figures it out--they go to Angelo’s and he goes perhaps a bit overboard in celebration: eating a whole plate of pasta and probably more of John’s than he should, quaffing way more wine than is his wont, and then going home and enthusiastically shagging (in their usual not-actually-physically-shagging manner).

Sherlock follows that up by sleeping for fifteen hours.

John is distant when he gets up the next afternoon. He smiles at Sherlock absently and says the right things, the normal things, the sorts of things he says every day, but there is a distance there that Sherlock can neither explain nor figure out how to bridge.

It doesn’t make sense. John is a constant presence in his head; distance isn’t really possible between them. Sherlock turns his full focus towards solving this new puzzle. He is confused and out of sorts and it leaves him uncomfortable, unsettled in a new way that he can’t wrap his head around.

John goes for long walks, wandering throughout London, sometimes so far that his presence in Sherlock’s head goes quiet and murmurous, coming back so late as to very nearly cause Sherlock to worry. He hates it; he hates to worry.

When he’s puttering around the flat, trying to look like he’s reading or making meals and quaffing even more tea than usual, Sherlock watches John. Not that he hasn’t always watched John, but now he’s wondering what it is he’s missed about his best friend/whatever he is these days. He thinks about the beginning, when they’d first moved in together, and how he’d never known that John is an empath.

He always misses something. It drives him insane.

It’s no excuse that he hadn’t even believed such a thing possible until John had explained it to him, until John had stapled them together, brain to brain, mind to mind, emotions to emotions. He still should’ve seen it. Looking back, he does. The way John treated him, how he always somehow knew precisely when to leave him alone to brood or to poke at him to eat or yell at him to jar him out of a mood. He’d thought it was simply that they were compatible as flatmates, as people, but John definitely had an edge. What else does John have going on that Sherlock doesn’t know about, can’t know about?

And now John is pulling away.

Sherlock supposes that it must be inevitable. No one has ever stuck around with him for so long. No one has ever truly been his friend the way John has. But John really has no excuse, does he? No way to get out of it. He can’t just leave, like everyone else did.

But it seems like he is anyway.

Sherlock is sat on the sofa in the dark when John returns from his walk. He can’t see John’s expression, but if his mental state is any clue, he’s probably frowning. Which, fine, Sherlock probably is as well.

“Are you sleeping tonight?” John asks, voice quiet, from the doorway.

“Not likely,” Sherlock replies. _Too much to think about. Too much to worry about, John. Too much. You are too much in my head. And you’re going to leave me._ He has no intention of falling prey to thinking in bed again, either. Too much temptation, being that close to John.

“All right. I’m--” John doesn’t finish his sentence; Sherlock should hate this, he does hate this, everything about this, especially this imprecision of language, but he lets it go.

A moment later he hears John’s footsteps on the stairs. Going up to his room. To change? To sleep?

John doesn’t return. To sleep, then.

_This is my fault; I should be better at this._

\----

John sleeps in his own bed all that week.

Sherlock wonders why they don’t sleep upstairs more often; John’s bed is the newer of the two, and the more comfortable. But they have taken to sleeping in Sherlock’s bed more often than not. There are more of John’s clothes in Sherlock’s room than in his own, as evidenced the next morning by John wandering into Sherlock’s room while Sherlock is still curled up on the sofa with his back to the room--he listens to John’s footsteps as he pads down the stairs, down the hall and into the room, returning several minutes later and going first into the bathroom and then into the kitchen. Sherlock hears the sink turn on, the fridge open, and John is making breakfast.

\----

John has deep and unsettled dreams that week, sleeping in his own bed. Sherlock suffers through them, through the emotions of them that steal his breath away on more than one occasion, leave him in tears twice, even though he’s not sleeping.

John doesn’t comment on the fact that he finds Sherlock curled on the sofa every morning when he comes downstairs.

Once, Sherlock steals up those stairs in the middle of the night. He stands outside John’s room for a long time, trying to suck the nightmares out of his head. It doesn’t work, except to infect him with the way they feel even more strongly than usual. It’s only marginally easier to fight them off when he’s awake than when he’s asleep.

He hesitates with his hand on the doorknob, then turns and goes back downstairs and picks up his violin, attempting to soothe both of them with music, since he can’t do it properly.

\----

John goes to the pub and comes back only a little bit drunk. Sherlock is curled on the sofa, as he has been all week, but this time he is facing the room instead of the wall.

He watches John stand swaying in the doorway, blinking at the room, not quite looking at him.

“Good night, Sherlock,” he says, just a touch slurred, and turns.

“Don’t,” Sherlock says. It stops John in his tracks.

After a moment, John turns again, towards Sherlock on the sofa. Sherlock doesn’t flinch under the stare John gives him, for long moments, before he nods. John turns again, this time the other way, and stumbles a bit towards Sherlock’s room.

Sherlock breathes a sigh of relief. He gives John a few minutes to get into his pyjamas before rising from the sofa, which has given him an awful aching back this week, while he’s waited for John to stop sequestering himself upstairs every night to suffer his nightmares alone.

His room is dark when he enters, but that doesn’t matter. He sheds his dressing gown and crawls into his bed, tucking himself in next to John and turning to face him.

John’s breath smells of lager. It’s not an awful smell, but it makes him wrinkle his nose. John smiles a little at the expression and shifts closer, breathes on him purposefully, and laughs when Sherlock makes a face.

Sherlock shuts his eyes and reaches out. His hand lands on John’s ribs, and he leaves it there. After a moment, John’s hand creeps up to his neck, and Sherlock sighs.

“Your dreams are awful,” Sherlock murmurs. It’s not an accusation, just a statement.

“I know,” John replies. “So are yours.” Sherlock can feel John’s lips moving, almost touching his skin. Their noses are touching; when did that happen? The smell of lager isn’t bothering him anymore. It’s almost pleasant.

“Sorry.” Sherlock traces John’s ribs through the thin t-shirt he’s wearing--one of Sherlock’s.

“No you aren’t.”

“Well, neither are you.”

“Mmm.”

There is silence except for the sound of them breathing, in tandem. Sherlock tries to think of a way to speak, to ask, to pry open John’s brain and get at what’s been bothering him so much, but the words won’t come.

John shifts again, and brushes his lips against Sherlock’s. They are soft, and they are warm.

“John, what--”

“Sorry,” John murmurs. “Sorry, I won’t--”

“No, it’s--”

“I just--”

“John!” Sherlock has to raise his voice to silence him, quiet his babbled excuses. “What was that?”

“A kiss, Sherlock. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.” John tilts his head down, tries to squirm out of Sherlock’s arms, but Sherlock won’t let him.

“More,” he says.

John looks up at him, surprise etched across his face. He smiles, a bit, and then kisses Sherlock again. Sherlock lets him, shuts his eyes to concentrate, to absorb. John’s lips are soft still, warm still, as he presses light kisses to Sherlock’s lips. Then they’re a bit wet, after John has licked them. Then they’re a bit more wet, after Sherlock has licked John’s lips, and John giggles at it, and Sherlock giggles with him, opening his eyes again briefly. John moves his hand to stroke his thumb along Sherlock’s cheekbone, and Sherlock preens under his touch, and John keeps kissing Sherlock. Little presses of lips, brushes back and forth, murmured sighs floating between them. John smiles against his lips.

“All right?” John asks him.

Sherlock sighs and opens his eyes enough to glare at John. John smiles at the expression and returns his attention to Sherlock’s lips. There’s a bit more pressure now, and John starts to take longer on each kiss; he pauses to move his attention to Sherlock’s jawline, nipping along it as far as he can reach without moving much, and then back again. Sherlock feels nothing but warmth and love and each and every kiss, and he keeps his eyes shut to wallow in the bliss of it.

“All right?” John asks him again.

“Mmm,” is the closest to a reply that Sherlock can manage. He feels as though he’s floating, as if everything is not just fine but actually fucking fantastic--and he knows it must be if he’s actually thinking the profanity in there--and he could do this all night.

There’s no rush, no urgency to it.

“Do you want more than this?” he might ask, at one point, before the kisses have progressed much further--it could be minutes later, or it could be days.

“No, this is fine,” John murmurs back to him. He takes the opportunity to start lavishing the attentions of his tongue on Sherlock’s neck, and everything goes spangly and white behind Sherlock’s eyes for a long time. When John chuckles against his clavicle, Sherlock rouses enough to make an interrogative noise.

“Your hand is on my bum,” John says, voice filled with amusement.

“Oh.” Sherlock sobers quite a bit at that. “Sorry.” He moves his hand.

“I wasn’t complaining.”

Sherlock starts when John leans back from him, just a few inches, looking down at him--when had they ended up like that, with John on top of him? John grabs his hand while Sherlock stares at him in confusion, and puts that hand back on his bum.

“Oh,” Sherlock says again. John smiles down at him.

“Now, where was I?”

Sherlock shrugs. And for a few minutes, John just looks at him. Sherlock recognizes that look; it’s the look he gives John quite often. It’s the look he gives puzzles.

The kissing gets more intense, after that. There’s more tongue, which Sherlock didn’t expect he’d like, but really actually does, quite a lot, thank you. Sherlock’s other hand finds its way to John’s bum as well.

John makes wonderful noises when he’s kissing, Sherlock notices. He’s not really sure how it is he manages to notice that, of all things, as mostly all he’s noticing is John’s lips against his own, his teeth nipping, the sucking, the tongue--oh god, the tongue.

But they’re wonderful noises: there are a lot of sighs, deep ones that mostly make noise as they’re gushing out of John’s nose, and there are little grunts, of approval Sherlock thinks, when Sherlock does something John really likes. The moans, however, are the best.

And John isn’t the only one doing that. It’s enough to make Sherlock blush. Or possibly that’s his elevated heart-rate and labored breathing.

It’s John that breaks the kiss, turning his head just slightly, breathing heavily, pressing their foreheads together.

“Sherlock?”

“Hmm?”

John doesn’t say anything else though, and Sherlock eventually nudges at him until they’re back in alignment and can spend some more eternities kissing. So they do. It’s less intense now, more playful. John has learned where Sherlock is a bit ticklish, and how sensitive the skin over his collarbones is. Sherlock is happy to giggle under his ministrations, nipping at John’s jaw and once at his nose.

He’s not sure if they’ve spent only a few minutes doing this, or hours, and is a little bit shocked with himself when he finds that he doesn’t mind not knowing. He doesn’t mind that his brain went off-line, that he was swamped in physical sensation. He likes that he didn’t find it totally overwhelming in a bad way.

They shift again, so that John is curled against his side, head on Sherlock’s chest, arm thrown over him. Sherlock is asleep before he even realizes he’s headed towards unconsciousness.

\----

There’s a sheet of paper on the nightstand when he wakes up the next day. It’s the first thing he sees. The writing on it is in John’s hand, he can see that quite clearly.

And John? John he can barely feel.

_What the fuck?_


End file.
